Route planner
Fuel shortages & cheapest petrol
on your route
See fuel outages on your route, not just prices
Several Australian tools will find cheap fuel along a drive — FuelRadar has a route planner, and the state government apps let you search a corridor. What none of them did when we last checked in July 2026 is answer the question that actually ruins road trips: will the servo I'm counting on have fuel when I get there? On remote legs — the Nullarbor, the Stuart Highway, outback Queensland — stations can be 200 km apart, and one dry bowser is the difference between a stop and a stranding.
PetrolPulse already runs Australia's live fuel shortage tracker, monitoring more than 8,000 stations through official government price feeds. This planner plots those live shortage signals directly along your driving route — alongside the cheapest stations in each stretch — so you can plan fuel stops around both price and availability before you leave. Planning a multi-day itinerary? Add up to four via stops and the route bends through the towns you've actually chosen — not the highway an automatic planner would pick for you.
Prices come from the same state schemes that power the rest of PetrolPulse: real-time feeds in NSW, ACT, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania, committed next-day prices in WA and the NT, and daily price caps in Victoria. No crowdsourcing, no stale app reports.
How to read the results
Blue dots mark your stops — origin, destination, and any numbered via points. Price pins show the cheapest station in each stretch of the route, with the cheapest few shaded green and the overall cheapest highlighted in the result strip. Red pins mean no fuel matching your selection is available at that station. Amber pins are stations where one product is short but another that matches your selection is still available. Both come from the same signals: either the station itself reported a fuel as unavailable, or it stopped reporting a price for that fuel while its other fuels stayed current. We label those honestly as "possible" shortages with a last-updated time — treat them as a reason to call ahead, not a verdict.
Each station shows its distance off the route as a straight line. On a highway run, even a station 2–3 km off-route can cost more in time and fuel than it saves — the cheapest tank is usually the near-cheapest station that's actually on your way.
Common questions
How does PetrolPulse know a station might be out of fuel?
Two ways. Some stations explicitly report a fuel as unavailable through their state's official price feed — we show those as reported outages. For the rest, we flag a possible shortage when a station stops reporting a price for one fuel while its other fuels stay current. A possible shortage is a signal to call ahead, not proof the tanks are dry.
How far off the route does the planner look?
Stations within about 6 km of the driving route are considered for prices, and shortage signals are picked up a little wider again, out to about 8 km. Each station is labelled with its straight-line distance off the route. We deliberately show "off-route distance" rather than a detour estimate — the actual detour depends on where the exits are.
Which routes does it cover?
Any drivable route in Australia up to roughly 6,000 km — Sydney to Melbourne, Adelaide to Perth across the Nullarbor, Kingscliff to Exmouth, or your weekend trip. You can add up to four via stops, so a multi-day itinerary follows the towns you actually plan to pass through rather than the fastest line. Prices come from every state and territory's official fuel price scheme.
Can I plan a multi-day trip with overnight stops?
Yes. Add up to four via stops between your origin and destination — say Adelaide to Coolum via Tailem Bend, Tooleybuc, West Wyalong and Tamworth — and the route follows your itinerary. One thing to keep in mind: prices and shortage signals are live at the moment you plan, so recheck before each day's leg.
I picked "Unleaded (any)" — why is one station flagged but another isn't?
It depends on whether you can still fill up. With "Unleaded (any)" or "Diesel (any)" we only warn when no fuel in that group is available at the station — if 91 is short but 95 is still being sold, that's shown as a note rather than a warning, because you can still refuel there. If you pick a specific product like E10, we warn whenever that exact product is short, since that's what you asked for.
Why doesn't it show every station on the route?
A long route can pass hundreds of stations, and a wall of pins helps nobody. The planner highlights the cheapest station in each stretch of the drive plus the cheapest overall, and overlays the reported or possible shortages that affect the fuel you selected. That's the decision you actually need: where to stop, and where not to rely on.
Written and reviewed by Mark Schreuder, founder of PetrolPulse · First published 17 July 2026